Broken: A Billionaire Love Story (9 page)

“Would you have walked away if the orderlies hadn’t come around?”

“I don’t know. No. Probably I wouldn’t have.”

“You spent what, ten days in the hospital?”

He nodded. “That’s right, yeah. They had to heal me up.”

“So, yesterday, you were twelve days clean, is that right?”

He nodded.

“Do you want a drink now more or less than you did two days ago?”

“More, I guess.” He shook his head. “No, no guesses. I want it more.”

“Right, so. A few drinks is too much. Even one drink is too much for you.”

He said nothing. Okay, thought Olivia. Let’s try a different track.

“In my experience,” she began, “there are three kinds of people that stop drinking.”

“Okay.”

His fingers slipped over hers. She let them, trying to ignore the warm, hot feeling released in her body. If that was what he needed to pay attention, to feel comforted...then she would let him.

“The first kind is someone who just gradually...doesn’t drink anymore. Most people, as they get older, they just stop. Alcohol doesn’t really do anything for them. They’re busy and it just gets in the way, and when they do drink, they do it sparingly.”

Shane laughed. “That’s not me.”

“Okay. The second sort is someone who has some terrible experience with drinking. Either they binged for some enormous portion of their lives, or they caused some kind of accident—there was some kind of incredible consequence, so huge that they couldn’t possibly go back.”

“I don’t know if that’s me.”

Shane rubbed his free hand on his leg—his other gripped hers hard as he spoke. 

There was something there, something he was hiding...but there was more than enough time to sort through that later.

“The third kind,” said Olivia, “is the sort who...they realize, with time and guidance, that they can’t achieve any kind of happiness with alcohol.”

“Lady,” he chuckled, “I achieve all kinds of happiness with alcohol.”

She smiled. “That’s not what I mean. Or, I mean happiness, but I don’t mean satisfaction. You know? Satisfaction isn’t the sort of thing that you should be able to just pick up from a bottle. It’s more profound than that. Happiness, long-term serenity, isn’t possible for a practicing alcoholic.”

She could see that he didn’t understand.

“May I elaborate?”

“Okay.”

She had slipped her hands over his, now. Tracing the lines on his palm. She didn't feel like his therapist—she felt like a friend. Something closer than that. She had to make him understand...

“Okay. So, most people, when they have a few drinks, they have a buzz, and there’s also a sort of biological signal that stops them from drinking any more. The buzz is enough—more than that, it’s too much. They don’t want it for very long. But there’s other kinds of people—you can call it a sort of allergy, if you like—that drink and they don’t get that signal communicated to them. They keep going and they don’t know how to stop.

“Pretty soon, any time they want to feel good, they’re going to drink. The problem is that people with emotional issues don’t learn how to process their problems when they’re drinking. This is true of anyone, really. We all need emotional practice to learn how to be emotional healthy. The same way someone might need football practice to learn how to play football. But, alcoholics continually try to use substances as an emotional fixer—even though it’s just fixing the surface feeling, and not the base problem. So you’re what, twenty-nine?”

“Right.”

“Okay. And you started drinking around age sixteen?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Then, I imagine that probably you are, emotionally at least, still very much a sixteen year-old. The good news is that, with work and attention, probably you will mature much faster than the normal rate. So...you won’t be emotionally thirty when you’re forty-three, I mean.”

“I don’t know that I see that right now.”

“Time will...give you perspective, I think. Every day that you’re sober, you’ll feel a little more sane.”

“I still...” He sighed again. “I feel singled out, you know? Why me? Why can’t I just drink like everyone else drinks? Other people can do it. I want to do it.”

She shrugged. “I have a bad knee, do you know that?”

“No.”

“I have a bad knee.”

She tapped it with a few fingers. As if on instinct, his hand reached over, touching her knee as well. Her head felt light from the contact.

“I tore it up in high school playing soccer,” she explained. “Took a bad fall after a real hell of a tackle. So anyway, the ACL, the MCL, all the Ls. They get torn to bits. And my meniscus too. So I wasn’t worth anything for walking for a good nine months or so of healing. I did a lot of yoga for a while.” She considered for a second. She wondered, ridiculously, whether he was imagining her in yoga pants, and sort of hoped that he was. “I need to get back into that, it helped. But anyway. Why me? Why did it all go wrong that way?”

“Because you were playing soccer that day, I guess.”

“That’s one answer. Maybe the other player had it out for me. Maybe I slept with her boyfriend, I don’t know. Or maybe I hadn’t trained enough, or maybe the coach had put me in the wrong position, or maybe the other players weren’t working hard enough and I played when I was tired. Maybe I had stepped just the wrong way fifteen minutes earlier and set off a chain of events to create the situation I got caught up...maybe, maybe, maybe.”

“Okay. So what?”

“So.” She gripped his hands hard. They were so strong. So much larger than hers. “Maybe you were born this way. Maybe you had some complication of emotional issues from a long time ago. Maybe you’re bored. Maybe you just don’t have any spirituality. Maybe you’re trying to block something out. None of that matters. Why you are an alcoholic is not really the important thing to focus on. That’s not anything you can do anything about.”

“So I should focus on what? That I’m an alcoholic?”

“Yes.”

“I just...I don’t know. I thought I already hit bottom. I’m disappointed in myself.”

“Pay attention in meetings. I think you’ll find out quite a few people end up skating and bouncing on the bottom for a little while before they can pull themselves up again. And besides any of that, Shane?”

His hands slipped out of hers and re-clasped them. God, this was getting too close. But she couldn't make herself stop. He felt so strong, so good...

“Your new friend, this girl you say you want something to happen with? Trust is a repetition, Shane. And an addict who can’t be honest with himself will only ever have one kind of repetition. If you go out there again, that’s fine. But don’t expect me to ever trust you again if you do.”

He leaned in then, and Olivia thought that Shane was trying to kiss her again.

She thought later that perhaps she had been jumping the gun. Perhaps he had just wanted to be closer to anybody.

But she kissed him. It was hot, beautiful, and perfect, her jaw working to push her lips into his, soft moans escaping their mouths. Her heart cried out with the need to help him, to cleanse every bit of his pain.

Outside, a car backfired as it started up. Olivia jolted a bit, and reality set back in.

“I’m sorry,” she said, standing up and shaking her head. “I think our time is up for the day!”

Chapter 12:

At the age of twenty-five, Shane was deep in his relationship with Paulette. Always, she was getting on him—call your Uncle. Ask for a management position. You don't have to be in charge right away. Just learn the business. See if you like it.

Shane and Paulette had met at some high-society party. He never had too many suspicions that she was only interested in him for his money, because she had money too, and if it wasn’t
for
his money then they wouldn’t have met at all. But, that didn’t mean she wanted him to keep working away at drinking and writing and drugging like he was.

Paulette wrapped Shane into drugging on a more regular basis than he ever would have explored it on his own. Her job in modeling was fairly high-stress, and her self-image was constantly being battled and explored from every angle. No one could tell her she was beautiful—not in a way that she would believe.

Even as much as she wanted him to be in the business, though, she wasn’t stopping him from getting more tattoos. They seemed almost as much of an addiction as any of his others. He had filled in the flames on his shoulder completely, now, and was ready for another. He had thoughts in his mind of grabbing some insurance against working in the business—tendrils of ink on his hands and neck.

When it came to the family business, Paulette thought his problem was that, if he started at a high level as was his “right” to do, he would think he didn't deserve his success.

Shane, of course, knew otherwise. Born with explosive fanfare on third base, he wasn't going to fool anybody into thinking he had gotten a triple.

Poetry was one way of proving his worth outside of the confines of anything except quality. It was, in many ways, a completely meritocratic system. He could work under a pen name, and no one would publish his work if it was terrible. No one would publish him if it was anything but good.

Dreams had long ago fled Shane. He didn’t really sleep anymore so much as shut his eyes and turn the volume on his brain down just a little. Usually, his hung over sleep wrapped his mind around phrases and phrases of lines he wanted to work out.

There is no life beyond this ring of death

and life and there is no ring beyond the ring

but the long horizon of every thought, every ring...

The phone rang, arousing Shane from his slumber.

“Shane?”

It was his mother. He suddenly wished he hadn't picked up the phone.

“Hi, Mom.”

“I'm just wondering when you're going to get here. Dinner is getting cold. I think I may have it stored for you.”

“Dinner?”

“Your birthday dinner, dear. You said you were going to be here. Are you...” he could hear all the fear, all the emotion in her voice. “Will you be arriving, today?”

“Oh.”

Last he checked, it had only been the first part of October. How long had they been partying? Paulette had gotten a new contract, and done a few big shows, they were both off until November, and...

Now, now it was his birthday, at the end of October. Good lord. How had he broken through so much time?

“It's just,” said his mother, “you swore up and down you'd be here. I wouldn't have put too much stock in it, but you kept saying about how excited you were to come down...”

He had been high on cocaine when he said all that, of course. Probably a little drunk as well. He remembered the conversation now, two weeks before, maybe. Birthdays didn’t usually hold much excitement for him. Even as young as he was, he just viewed them as markers on the way to the grave. With all the money he’d had access to, there was never really a time when he got a gift that he couldn’t have had at some other point. And the more he isolated himself, the less he wanted to celebrate. He must have been really, really high to insist on a birthday dinner with his family.

But now, he had to commit to the lie.

“Yup,” he said. “On my way. Just, you know. Stuck at the airport. Delays, all that. I’ll be there soon.”

He hung up, breaking out in a cold sweat, trying to come up with a plan.

First, wake the hell up. That was first.

Pushing himself over Paulette's prone, passed-out body, he pulled a few new lines of coke into his system from off the bedside table. As much as he wanted nothing to do with his family's money, he seemed to have no problem at all using it on drugs.

Wide awake, now! The world connected, narrowing completely. It would be a simple thing to show up to his parent's house. He just had to make the drive to the airport. He could hire a jet. That was a nice gesture, right? Spending all that money to get there to be with them. With the jet, he could be there in two hours.

Pulling on a mishmash of clothes—button-up shirt and cargo shorts and leather loafers—he rushed out the door and ran down to his car. Probably he’d be back before Paulette even woke up.

He had promised himself he would never drive again drunk, after the incident with Hunter. But that was different. A whole different kind of vehicle. And he had been drunk, then, not high.

And so, after a series of such rationalizations, soon he was on the highway, completely wired.

He could make it, he thought, cranking up past eighty miles an hour. He would be a little late, but he’d pay the pilot extra to go faster...he could make it for his birthday, still. That was good, right? That was enough. It was his birthday, after all. He could arrive whenever he wanted.

His phone rang—lost on the other seat. He jerked to grab it—and pulled entirely off the road, flying along at nearly ninety miles an hour. When he realized what was happening, he hit the brakes, skidding and swerving into a complete one-eighty on the shoulder. Horrible breaking sounds filled the air, mechanical parts banging against each other in all the ways they weren’t made to.

For a few minutes, Shane sat there in the car. Smoke rose up from the tires, the engine. He was pretty sure he had done something awful to his brakes, his axel. He didn’t think his car was in drivable position.

A purple minivan drove up in front of him, a woman stepping out and waving. Asking if he was okay. Shane, full of shame, took his time as he walked out of the car.

“Yeah,” he began, head held low, smoke filling his nostrils. “I’m just—”

The woman was on the ground. Collapsed. No blood. What the hell?

He rushed to her—a little pile of vomit was there beneath her mouth.

“What the hell?” he asked again, audibly this time.

Not knowing what else to do, he picked her up and dropped her into her own minivan. Then he got in the driver’s seat and peeled out, taking the first exit to head toward the hospital. The euphoria of the coke mixed hotly with the strange desperate confusion of the situation. The whole way, he was talking to this woman, trying to do anything to help her. Holding her hand, grabbing her to keep her upright. Half of her body seemed alive, holding on to the car seat—and the other half was totally limp.